I can't believe that I have only just discovered Permaculture right now! The idea was discovered and created by Bill Mollison over 30 years ago. If you love gardening then you will LOVE Permaculture.

The idea is that you work with Nature, not against it - soooo you basically delegate a whole bunch of mundane tasks to your friends! Insect friends, chicken friends, worm friends, bird friends, green plant friends, bacteria in the soil friends...you get the picture! It is just so obvious that this is the way to go - you'll wonder why you worry about weeds or pests or why you even DIG for that matter (best to just create fantastic soil and never turn it so you don't disturb the worms and all the good stuff inside)...why you don't need to use pesticides or fertilizers! Really, it's beautiful.

It is somewhat disconcerting that the best Permaculture books seem to be out of print - I mean, huh? I'm sure that Bill Mollison thought that everyone would be living Permaculture style by now - as it's so simple and feels like common sense! I imagine he's a little disappointed. But, perhaps, magically his books will go back into print (magic happens!) and my second favourite Permaculture book will go into better print or distribution so it's not so expensive. Seems like many Permaculturalists are Australian (Bill and Linda are). What's wrong with us North Americans, huh?

Topics I will eventually cover here are:

*Tropical Permaculture
*All the aspects of gardening Permaculture-style
*Bee Keeping
*Chickens and the very cool moveable chicken 'tractors' (they eat all your garbage, clean your beds and fertilize them all at once - no digging!)
*Designing a Mandala Garden
*My Favourite Books
*Links

I'll start you off with a fantastic Permaculture website TropicalPermaculture she's great and it's through this woman/website that I found the BEST Permaculture book: The Permaculture Home Garden, by Linda Woodrow. She writes, and I agree, Permaculture is about..."saving the planet and living to be a hundred, while throwing very impressive dinner parties and organising other creatures to do most of the work."

Here is her extensive review of Linda Woodrow's book.

Bill Mollison's books - oh my goodness I found a website that sells them here! I also have the Gaia's garden book, too, and it is very good as well.

Enjoy this little introduction - I hope it pique's your interest!

Tracey